I have made a modified sous-vide setup based on the following excellent instructions which I have not seen mentioned here. Total cost was under $75 for me since I simplified the setup a bit. Temperature accuracy is excellent.
Quick overview of my modifications. I used a 6" deep full size hotel pan I got in chinatown as my water bath and a standard $9 1500 watt water heater element instead of the set of immersion heaters.
I'm thinking of building something similar but instead of connecting the heating elements directly install a normal wall outlet and use a longer cable for the temp probe.
This way it would be possible to use a rice cooker as some have used in different projects or you can always plug in the same heating elements you used in your setup.
This is an awesome hack, but I gotta point out that the price point on "real" SV he's using is off. It's $400+ if you buy a Sous Vide Supreme. But you can also buy a $40 rice cooker (which is a multitasker) and a $130 PID controller from Auber Instruments.
The only downside to the beer cooler hack, besides the fact that it's not precise enough to do eggs, is that it won't work over very long cook times. It looks like it'll kill on steaks, but it isn't going to work for medium rare short ribs.
More Hacker News on Sous Vide, another topic I seriously will not shut up about, is here:
Auber has great customer service too - the sensor on my PID went bad and when I emailed Auber about it, they FedExed a new sensor to me within minutes.
(it occurs to me though that the cooler insulation might help a lot with "active" SV, and now I need to find a way to PID-control an immersible heater).
I did this last weekend, it made one of the best steaks that I have ever had in my life.
I used a cheap cooler, so I cranked up the temp by 10 degrees above what I wanted the steak to be at when it finished.
One thing that isn't brought up on the page, you probably want to use a rapid digital thermometer rather than your standard analog meat thermometer, I probably let out too much heat when I checked the temp halfway though.
This reminds me of a staple of my Boy Scout cooking: eggs in a bag. Just crack your eggs into a zip top bag (it must be a freezer bag to handle the temperature), add cheese, or peppers, or whatever you like in an omelet, suck out the air, and put it in boiling water until it’s done. Then, if you eat your omelet straight out of the bag, you have no clean up!
It had never occurred to me then to try to cook anything else in bags, but I'm certainly going to try this out.
Just remember that there's a huge difference between boiling and SV'ing eggs. Boiled eggs sound gross. Boiled steak is gross. You don't want to let the eggs get over 150. Eggs cook fast. Water boils at 212f.
Any consideration for toxicity? I can't imagine plastic baggies are designed to keep food safe for human consumption when you heat them enough to cook meat.
This is talking about a completely different temperature range. What you meant is “cooking your Ziplock at > 195°F may make it melt, and the effects thereof have not been adequately studied”
Home brewers have a very similar problem. When you make beer from all grain, you need to stop the heating at certain temperatures and stay at that temperature for some amount of time to let certain enzymes activate. Using a cooler to maintain heat is fairly standard in home brewing. Very neat.
That's cool! I'm going to try an omaha steak in my cooler, it is already vacuum sealed so as far as I can see I just throw the steak in the hot water and go have a few cold beverages while it cooks. Mmmmmh.
I don't want to burst your bubble or anything, but you should call omaha steaks and ask them what the USDA grade of their steaks would be if they paid for them to be graded. Combine that with the fact that they are usually frozen and you're not getting a good deal on their meat.
I would be at least a little worried about food poisoning. Cooking salmon at 115 deg F, or beef at 125 deg F or even chicken at 140 deg F is not a high enough temperature to kill off many harmful bacteria and parasites. In normal cooking, the external surfaces of the meat, where most contamination occurs, reach much higher temperatures.
Killing most bacteria is a function of temperature and time. The higher the heat, the less time it has to be at that temperature. The lower the heat, the longer it has to be at that temperature. It's all a numbers game. Nothing is completely safe.
Typically you would sear the fish/beef/chicken before/after for texture, flavor and color. Beef for instance will come out grey on the outside and look unpleasant unless seared (inside is still bright red/pink though).
The bigger risk is the time that the food is left in the danger zone of above 50 degrees and below 125 degrees (don't quote me on those numbers, going off memory). Basically any bacteria present in food in that temp range will start reproducing quickly. I have heard 4 hours as the time limit acceptable to have food in that temp range before being considered unsafe.
The whole point is that temperature of the medium is unrelated to the temperature of the food.
A raw steak is a steak that reaches UPTO temerature X (about 55C I think) during the cookieng.
So you can put it into a low temp cooking device for an hour on 55C or you can throw it onto a 200C owen and leave it there just enough time for it to heat upto 55C.
It seems like there are a decent amount of misconceptions people have about sous vide cooking. Everyone should have a look at the sous vide primer here http://www.cookingissues.com/primers/
[+] [-] yish|16 years ago|reply
http://seattlefoodgeek.com/2010/02/diy-sous-vide-heating-imm...
Quick overview of my modifications. I used a 6" deep full size hotel pan I got in chinatown as my water bath and a standard $9 1500 watt water heater element instead of the set of immersion heaters.
[+] [-] tptacek|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shpxnvz|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bshep|16 years ago|reply
This way it would be possible to use a rice cooker as some have used in different projects or you can always plug in the same heating elements you used in your setup.
Do you think this would be feasible?
[+] [-] tptacek|16 years ago|reply
The only downside to the beer cooler hack, besides the fact that it's not precise enough to do eggs, is that it won't work over very long cook times. It looks like it'll kill on steaks, but it isn't going to work for medium rare short ribs.
More Hacker News on Sous Vide, another topic I seriously will not shut up about, is here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1093433
[+] [-] joshu|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icey|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] farmerbuzz|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roberte3|16 years ago|reply
I used a cheap cooler, so I cranked up the temp by 10 degrees above what I wanted the steak to be at when it finished.
One thing that isn't brought up on the page, you probably want to use a rapid digital thermometer rather than your standard analog meat thermometer, I probably let out too much heat when I checked the temp halfway though.
[+] [-] chrisa|16 years ago|reply
It had never occurred to me then to try to cook anything else in bags, but I'm certainly going to try this out.
[+] [-] tptacek|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DrSprout|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hernan7|16 years ago|reply
http://camping.about.com/od/campingrecipes/a/ziplocbaggies.h...
[+] [-] jacobolus|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimdeterman|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geoffc|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logicalmind|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stjarnljuset|16 years ago|reply
http://www.salon.com/nov96/salmon961118.html
[+] [-] whyenot|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logicalmind|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yish|16 years ago|reply
The bigger risk is the time that the food is left in the danger zone of above 50 degrees and below 125 degrees (don't quote me on those numbers, going off memory). Basically any bacteria present in food in that temp range will start reproducing quickly. I have heard 4 hours as the time limit acceptable to have food in that temp range before being considered unsafe.
[+] [-] Vitaly|16 years ago|reply
If you miss this 55C point and it heats upto 60C it wont be raw anymore. After all: "The entire range of steak doneness, from rare to well-done, is only a matter of 14°C (25°F)" (http://www.cookingissues.com/primers/sous-vide/part-i-introd...)
[+] [-] dzlobin|16 years ago|reply